RIP Gordon Moore: Intel co-founder dies, aged 94 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has died, the microprocessor giant confirmed this evening. He was 94. The chip guru passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, in Hawaii on Friday, according to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the philanthropy org he formed with his wife. Moore is perhaps best known for …
In 1982 a 40 megabyte (not gigabyte) hard disk, which was the size of a microwave oven, was $5K. It had 14" platters IIRC. This was on a CompuPro S-100 box.
I remember selling PC ATs with 10-20GB drives for $4K or so in the late '80s during college.
"I remember selling PC ATs with 10-20GB drives for $4K or so in the late '80s during college."
Something's amiss. 10GB was something available in late 90's or so.
Hard drives for PC ATs in late 80's were confined to <500MB (ESDI) drives - which may have been around $4K.
"Or full-height 330Mb MFM drives that needed their own controller card"
PC's until ~1995 didn't have hard drive controllers on the motherboard, so controller was always needed.
Also I think MFM/RLL interface drives were never made at even 200MB size. It was a cumbersome interface (3 cables per drive), and it was slow (<1MB/s), so manufacturers just went with SCSI, ESDI (same 3x cabling but way faster) and ATA.
"and were 10x the 32Mb limit for DOS/Win3.1"
DOS 4 came out late 80's and removed the 32MB partition limit. If you were stuck on DOS 3 you just created more partitions.
We must have transitioned from MFM to ESDI at some point, there were definitely separate data / control cables but we had 330Mb cos we had to run Kodak (!) Unix on the 386, installed from boxes of 5.25 floppies
I remember in the mid 90s when external 1 Gb SCSI disks dropped to £1000, we got one for each Sun so that we would never have to worry about disk space ever again.
Quite.
I bought a 20Mb Seagate MFM drive for about 200 quid around 1989, and fitted it to a PC running DOS 5 - it was great - almost instant booting (compared to a 1.2Mb HDD floppy) and for a while I was happy.
Then I bought a second Seagate HDD, 40Mb this time, a year later for again about 200 quid and used this as a data/archive drive (ie drive D:).
Soon ran out of space and MFM controller gave way to an Adaptec SCSI controller and a pair of Quantum 80Mb SCSI-1 HDD...with a plan to buy another 2 later on. But Quantum went bust before I could and that was that.
Nowadays, I can get 1Tb HDD for around 60 quid and even 1Tb SSDs are so cheap these days.
Ugh. Adaptec SCSI controller broken firmware fuckery. At one time I was assisting a bloke who had the full time job of dealing with that.
One set of cards would work fine. The next set would completely die after being queried for LUNs or something equally common. Firmware.
In 1991/2 I got to play with a laptop with a plasma screen. You could almost cook eggs on the back of the monochrome (orange/black) display and the battery was huge to allow it to run for more than a few minutes not connected to a wall socket. I don't remember the manufacturer or the cost but I suspect it was over £4,000 for such technology. It was a much better display than the lethargic monochrome LCD screens that were there at the time.
This was in the days when we tested a video adaptor by playing Windows Solitaire and observing the completion animation.
I had an orange plasma Elonex 386sx ‘laptop’ back then (about 1990) - I remember the screen did get pretty hot.
It took so much power they didn’t even bother with batteries so needed plugging in wherever you went, and being somewhat weighty was more of a luggable than a laptop - I think it cost me a little over £1700 - that was the same price as the 286 machine I’d bought at the beginning of 1988 with an EGA monitor.
In 1980 my dad bought us (well, really: me) our first microcomputer, Apple 2, 48KB, single 96K floppy drive with 12 inch monitor for 6,000 Deutschmark.
Which an inflation calculator tells me would amount to over 12,000DM today (or a bit over 6,000 Euros). That's still a doubling - though I confess less than I expected. Reading up further, German inflation has always been lower, due to the trauma of 1923 it's been a mania to keep in check through a century. In comparison US$6,000 in 1980 would now be over US$21,000.
Official inflation rate from 1980-2023 is about 170% or a factor of 2.68 (don't know where you got the 2.0 factor).
https://www.lawyerdb.de/Inflationrate.aspx
Real numbers are usually even higher - comparing bread price and car price (VW golf in 1980 to VW Polo in 2023 since Golf is arguably a much bigger car now) you get a factor of about 3.9, so your 6.000 DEM in 1980 would be almost 12.000€ today.
https://www.was-war-wann.de/historische_werte/brotpreise.html
Basic VW Golf in 1980: 12,000 DEM, basic Polo today: 20,800€
https://www.auto-neupreise.de/hersteller/2599-volkswagen-vw/vw-golf/vw-golf-i-1974-1983/2793-neupreise-vw-golf-1980
https://www.volkswagen.de/de/modelle.html/__app/der-neue-polo.app
Maybe checking the real inflation (i.e. price of bread) will open everybody's eyes about "low" inflation...
Yes. Without the contributions made by Dr. Moore, and other electronics industry pioneers, the average inflation rate would be much higher. Their success in making electronics cheap also translates into making manufacturing cheaper. It is the principal reason, if not the only reason, inflation is not *10 or greater.
Maybe checking the real inflation (i.e. price of bread) will open everybody's eyes about "low" inflation...
In the UK the official year-on-year inflation rate is said to be around 10.4%. In reality it seems to have been a weekly 10% increase on food, sometimes 50% overnight. I can't find any food which isn't at least twice what it was a year ago.
Supermarkets say it's because of inflation. I am more inclined to believe it's their price gouging which is driving inflation. The greedy capitalist bastards say they are doing all they can to keep prices low but it looks more like they are doing everything possible to maximise profit, removing own and 'no-name' brands, keeping shelf stock low, limiting choice, consolidating fixed prices across a range of alternatives, over-inflating the price of smaller quantity items compared to larger.
The few 'corner shops' we have, which have historically been much more expensive than the supermarkets, are now considerably cheaper but don't stock a wide range.
Might I suggest that you haven't done any calculations on this?
"In the UK the official year-on-year inflation rate is said to be around 10.4%. In reality it seems to have been a weekly 10% increase on food, sometimes 50% overnight."
Do you know what that would actually look like? People have really experienced that, but I can guarantee that you have not. If there was an average weekly inflation rate of 10%, then something that cost £1 a year ago would now cost £142.04. Has that happened? To anything?
"Supermarkets say it's because of inflation. I am more inclined to believe it's their price gouging which is driving inflation."
There's some of each, but you can see some of the causes in the increase of raw commodities. For example, at the beginning of 2022 wheat cost on average $7.58 US per bushel. When 2023 started, that had risen to $8.95, about 18% up. The destruction of Ukraine's wheat industry didn't help with this. That increases the price for items made from wheat without the retail outlets having to do it. Not to mention that, if you're in the mood to assume that every price increase is due to someone's greed, you are ignoring all the links in the chain at which a price increase can be inserted and putting it all on the one link you have direct contact with. It wouldn't be that hard to trace the price increases through the chain, but you need to acknowledge what the real increase has been before you can take that step.
Also, you don't appear to understand how such stores work:
"it looks more like they are doing everything possible to maximise profit": They would be, since they really like profit, but let's look at what you think they're doing to do so.
"removing own and 'no-name' brands,": Nope. The ones they make themselves mean they get to have a higher profit margin on them and they make more profit. The no-name brands they don't make also tend to be from places that cannot command customer demand and thus the stores get better profit margins from the sale of those as well. This change decreases their profitability, and it might have something to do with the fact that larger companies with their own brands may be better able to obtain resources when there is a shortage.
"keeping shelf stock low,": Sometimes this helps, but mostly when they would waste some by keeping more. If you would stock up if they had more available, they'd make more profit.
"limiting choice,": I can't argue with this one in general, but as we've already covered the choices they removed, I'm not sure I need to.
Own brand products tend to come from the same factories as branded products. Not necessarily from the same production line.
Price differences come from different quality standards - eg Tesco Finest will generally have higher standards than the branded products and cost more; Tesco Value will have lower standards and cost lest; and also from lower marketing costs.
I bought a no-name motherboard for an i486 at a computer fair in London for about GBP 100. (as I had already got myself a 486DX-33 beforehand).
At the same show I bought 4x 4 Mb of RAM SIMMs to go with it, at GBP 100 per SIMM, so that made the total GBP 500.
The crazy thing was that where I worked, they had 2 Hewlett-Packard PCs in the sales office: one was a 286 @12 Mhz and the other was a 286 @10Mhz.
I brought my 486 in to work (as the firm didn't want to buy a PC for me, preferring instead for me to hand write reports for our office secretary to then type out !!) and I got abuse from our chairman for doing this...until I pointed out to him that I was freeing up the secretarys time (from typing up my reports) so she could then spend more time doing work for him !!).
All I had to do was to run a long parallel cable from my PC to the office HP LaserJet so I could print stuff out. Them were the days !!
What a classy comment on the obituary of someone who significantly contributed to the existence of the industry you're whinging about.
I'd hope someone makes a similarly crass comment on your obituary, but based on this contribution you're not likely to have one.
I don't know, I'd make far more nasty comments than I do if I thought I'd never die as a result
We are most of us remembered in some way when we pass. Hopefully this gentleman will be remembered as was Ea-Nasir. Or perhaps the ancient Greek sycophant who made an offering to the temple in someone else's name, of whom Herodotus said only: "I know his name, but I will not record it".
This post has been deleted by its author
Moore's "law" was an aspirational goal intended to accelerate growth and tech bloat. It succeeded, and that's how we got modern "wonders" such as FaceBook and BitCoin. Not to mention venture capitalists, surveillance capitalism, and the Silicon Valley Bank. Is humanity the better for it? Not so clear to me.
No it was an observation that the process cost of each wafer was proportional to the wafer area but the cost of going to smaller features was a one-off cost of a mask stepper (at least until we got into insanity-optics of EUV) and making a gate 30% smaller lets you fit twice as many parts in the same area.
ps I'm not sure that Moore's law didn't actually stop at around 14nm designs for the original purely financial defn
Features have got smaller, and that's necessary for speed/size/power consumption, but I don't know if a 3nm fabbed device is cheaper/transistor than at 5nm
This post has been deleted by its author
his so-called "law" was in reality just used as a "licence to bloat" by his company, Micro$oft(sic)
He didn't make Microsoft, nor did he work there. I don't know what you have to do to somehow decide that Microsoft was his company. His "law" was about hardware improvements, whatever you choose to do with those improvements. You can use a doubling in processing speed to do your previous calculations twice as fast or to do twice as many things, including operating systems.
I'm guessing that, given the level of understanding you've demonstrated this far, that it's worthless explaining what that "bloat" actually means. I might point out that, for the extra CPU time operating systems use today compared to the 1970s, you get a lot of features that you count on every day. I might also point out that you're free to write your own operating system that ignores all of that and will run at impressive speeds, except it won't have such things as multiprocessing, which is probably for the best because it will also lack inter-process security. There's a reason that every operating system used today on general-purpose computers wouldn't run on a 1970s-era CPU: we value the features those operating systems provide more than the speed benefits of dropping them.
I'm guessing that, given the level of understanding you've demonstrated this far
I'm guessing that the poster is a 'penguin head' as entrenched in their position as a Microsoft groupie.
So many people polarised in a debate where actual analysis and consideration is a better approach. Sometimes the MS ecosystem is a good fit. Sometimes the Linux ecosystem. Sometimes something different altogether. Get your client what best suits them not what suits you ;)
This post has been deleted by its author
In 1996, the microprocessor forum gave out binders with chips in the cover https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/digital-logic/12/330/1580 .
If they made that binder with 2023 technology, it would shrink to a SMALL postage stamp -- and the chips would become almost invisible
Maybe the USPS would make such a stamp ...
In such dark times you need a smile, so I'll leave this here:
And I'll raise a pint.
How much better the world would have been if he had never been? I'm sure he was a fine person, kind to animals and small children, salt of the earth and whatnot, and I do not say this to be mean or badmouth the man. But, if we were not computerized to the great extent that we are today, how much better would life be? I'm old enough to remember the world before the internet was a thing for the common man, and life was grand back then. The music was better, people were kinder, ect. How much better would life be, if everyone never had a computer?
>I'm old enough to remember the world before the internet was a thing for the common man
It was a bit shit for the common women and even more shit for the un-common man
>, and life was grand back then.
Cars were so much better without emission control, abs or airbags
> The music was better,
And you had gangster producers bribing pedophile DJs to limit what you could listen to, unlike now where you have every musician in the world in your pocket.
> people were kinder,
That is true, being a kid in Belfast in the 70s was much kinder than now.
Life would SUCK without computers and the internet. I REMEMBER how much life sucked!
I can get parts for my motorbike without relying on the dealer's incompetent parts guy and paying a 30% markup for the privilege.
I can get tools I need. I remember trying to buy a 32mm socket in '94, and it was a nightmare.
I no longer have to depend on TV for entertainment, with 20% ads and canceling anything that's even slightly interesting.
I can buy stuff I need. People say "support your local merchant!!!111oneoneone" and I say "I would, if he stocked anything I needed! Or would bother ordering it!"
I can learn how to do something in a couple hour's research.
I can learn something's possible that I didn't know about, like the fact a 2022 slipper clutch drops right into a 2007 FJR with almost no work, or the 2009 master cylinder is 2mm larger and gives you a much easier clutch action, and again, it just bolts on.
The cashier at my local grocery store can just instantly scan items. I remember as a kid when she had to punch in EACH and EVERY price of every item that one bought. I also remember the dreaded "price check" when an item didn't have a price, so things ground to a complete halt while she had to send a stockboy to actually physically look.
There's a computer running the fuel injection in my bike so I don't have to clean carbs every summer and winter. There's another one monitoring my front wheel so my brakes don't lock up and throw me to the ground.
Digital cameras are so much better than faffing about with film and processing.
GPS saves my butt at least once a week. I have worse than no sense of direction, and I remember when I had to take 4 or 5 maps of various resolutions EVERY time I had to go somewhere. I also remember sitting in my car screaming "WHERE THE FUCK AM I!!?!" in frustration at the umpteenth time getting lost.
I can sit down and write a reasoned, coherent email instead of sitting on the phone going "um... er... ah... wot... I don't know..."
I can meet up with people by texting until we get together. Doing that before cellphones was a nightmare. You could try to coordinate beforehand, but something always came up to completely destroy everyone's plans.
Edit: and I almost forgot having the '60s science fiction item of being able to video-call my mother and have a face-to-face with her despite being 670 miles away. That one thing brightens both our lives immensely.
Yes, and before computers got involved in telephone exchanges, phoning someone meant more noise than signal on the analogue lines, and asking a lady at the exchange to physically connect your line.
Calls cost more per minute then than they do now, even before adjusting for inflation.
>>* for all intents and purposes
Interstingly cheap PCs/Microprocessors have also given us and unending supply of malapropisms.... for all intensive porpoises....
I am sure they existed before the blanket availability of t'internet but now they are much more in your face; before one heard them dropped deliberately into after dinner/wedding speeches for a laugh (anyone ever recievd a perffee copulator?), now they are everywhere, spouted by peple who pacifically and often vociferously don't care that they are actually wrong.
/mines the one with athe collected works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan in the pocket. Unread, but it's there.
Even if the music was better and the people were kinder, why do you assume that it's the computer's fault? Maybe you're unhappy about changes that have happened during your lifetime, but people always have some changes they wish hadn't happened, and it's not the fault of every other change. For example, I'm guessing you're not old enough to have lived before cars, but some people were, and they blamed cars for the ills they saw when your generation was younger. Does that sound reasonable to you?
Computers have brought us a lot of positives. We can communicate over long distances much faster and cheaper than we ever could before. People have been raised from poverty with this global communication capability. Personal ties have been strengthened by simple changes like the fact that I can call my family or friends that live in a different country, time zone, or continent without getting a massive bill. People's lives have been improved because they can look up important information rather than hoping that their nearest library had a book on the topic (for those fortunate to have a local library at all). Some jobs of pointless drudgery have been replaced by twenty-line scripts. Computers gave us all that. They also gave us internet trolls to annoy us, but before they gave us those, they gave us internet communities where we can talk to one another, something we both appear to enjoy since we're posting here. Computers have not just given us good things, and there are places where their effect has caused problems, but before you jump to blaming every ill you see with the present on that change, account for all the things you take for granted now that you did not have back then and attribute to computers the positive and negative things they actually caused.
"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
And summers were sunnier, and it snowed at Christmas, and girls were prettier, and I could climb stairs without getting out of breath, and I could eat garlic…
And detective films relied on someone discovering who the murderer was, then spending an hour trying to tell the police, instead of picking up a mobile phone…
People were not kinder at all, they just had fewer outlets to vent their hate. Yes, bullying appears to have gone up, the only solution at the moment IMHO is for Twitter to be swallowed into its own cesspool. People will say anything if they can be anonymous. They would not dare to say these things to people directly.
I, too am old enough to remember life before the internet. As a student, it was hard work, and the advent of GPS was a complete game changer when I learned to drive. I am very dyslexic and the computer is something that, without it, would have made life very much harder.
The fact that I now have a phone that is literally thousands of times more powerful than the first computer I had, still staggers me. Also the fact that I can hold a video call, while on lockdown with relatives in New Zealand, Australia, France, Finland and the UK simultaneously.
That's rose tinted glasses and nostalgia talking, not reality. Our live's are infinitely better because of technology. Are we perhaps too overly reliant on it and is it perhaps a bit TOO invasive to our daily lives? Maybe, but that's down to people, not the technology.
Computerworld: Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2532590/forgotten-pc-history--the-true-origins-of-the-personal-computer.html
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
Expanded summary:
* 8008/8080 came from the Datapoint 2200 design, not the calculator-based 4004.
* As reported in other accounts, the 2200 design was offered to both Intel and Texas Instruments in order to pay an overdue bill for memory chips. Intel accepted, TI refused.
* The improved instruction set of the upgraded 2200 became the Zilog Z-80 when Intel decided the original was good enough. Some Intel engineers thought otherwise, left and formed Zilog. The two instruction sets were essentially identical, even at the bit level.
* The 2200 was an early all-in-one computer, having keyboard, screen, processor and storage (a pair of digital tape drives) in one desktop box.
* The display on the 2200 was a pioneer of human factors engineering. The screen refresh was synchronized to the power line so office fluorescent lights reflecting off the screen no longer caused flicker-induced headaches for the operators.
* Datapoint also pioneered heterogenous networking in Arcnet, where multiple computers could share a single hard drive. (Was this the first SAN?) The interface also supported hardware encryption via a plug-in scrambler PROM chip, which allowed different users to have private repositories on a shared drive. I saw all this in operation with a software development team. Each programmer had their own chip to encode their work.
* Arcnet also had a wireless link over non-laser, non-radio infrared optics, so it didn't require FCC or AT&T permission to cross a public street within a campus, as wired or radio network links would at the time.
* The Datapoint OS also allowed rudimentary multi-tasking. For example, one could play a game on the screen while copying one removable hard disk to another.
Not bad for the early 1970's!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
